Monday, March 9, 2009

Moving in to hour three of the festival we headed upstairs to Heaven/Room1 to catch Skeletonwitch's set. I've seen the witch a couple of times now and every time they just get better and better every time. The guys in the band are some of the chillest people you will ever meet. Genuinely nice guys who play some fucking killer metal. They have a new album coming out sometime in the somewhat near future and you could tell they were amped on the new material, totally reflected in a spot on performance. Considering they weren't quite ready with most of the new material, the set was their fairly standard Beyond the Permafrost lineup with one song from the new album. I was too busy thrashing to catch the name of it but that shit ruled. Way catchy, a little less black metal than their older shit but on point. Definitely had more of a riffy catchy feel to it.

You really have to hand it to Skeletonwitch though. They totally have the stage presence thing down. Between the mirror image left/right handed guitar players, the full on greasy metal manes, and the lead singer's fucking amazing dance moves, they are just so so good on stage. NOTE: Reference picture below isn't from the Scion show.

In summation, the witch was heavy and fast, the crowd thrashed, the band sounded good, there were no visible fuck ups and people were really getting in to the vibe. Killer.

If Skeletonwitch was the sweet high school during-the-day–janitors-closet-makeout-sesh-foreplay, Toxic Holocaust was definitely the scoring-in-the-back-of-your-Volkswagen-outside-of-your-girlfriends-mom's-house-even-though-you-have-a-buttcut-and-bleachblond-hair of follow-ups. Joel and co held that shit down like a 10 ton weight with their first Bathory album black-thrash mayhem, they shredded through their set with a vengeance. Highlights included 666, Evil Never Dies, and Feedback, Blood, & Distortion. You gotta hand it to the guy, Joel definitely has his thing, that thing is metal, and he does it well. I've missed them twice before in the last couple of months, never again will I show up late to that show.